Emotional reception

There are many works of art that evoke emotion in me. Oddly enough for me as a visual artist, the medium that tugs at my emotions the most is music. Of the factors responsible for this, the strongest seems to be memory. I cannot discount associations from my childhood, which was filled with music; the musical score that accompanied my adolescence and all the angst that accompanies that period of life.

I’m sure that there are neural circuits attuned to certain harmonies, sequences of notes or even the sonority of certain instruments, that have links to the brain’s emotional circuitry.

There are many similarities with the visual arts. Paintings, for example, contain the visual residue of an artist’s actions. In some cases, such as the with Action Painters, one can imagine the energy, if not the emotions behind spatters of paint on the canvas. As with the components of music, colors, combination of colors, different visual media probably have links memory associations and the emotional machinery of the limbic system.

Emotional transmission

There is a difference between understanding that emotions are transmitted by the arts (not just visual and musical, but also performing arts such as dance and theater) and how an artist does this.

I am currently reading essays by Hans Hofmann, Abstract Expressionist of the mid-20th century, in which he discusses portraying space in the pictorial space of a canvass. He avoided using tools of perspective, which he thought did not adequately portray three dimensional space. He concentrated on juxtaposition of colors, tones, textures and other elements in a way that created tension. He called this tension, ‘push pull’.

Hofmann firmly believed that the inner life of the artist, which included a sense of empathy, is a key ingredient in the production of a work of art.  Here is what he had to say about emotion in art:

“The magic of painting, however, can never be fully, rationally explained. It is the harmony of the heart and mind in the capacity of feeling into things that plays the instrument. The instrument answers the throb of the heart in every instance. Painting is always intuitively conditioned. Theoretically it is a process of metabolism, whereby color transubstantiates into vital forces that become the real sources of painterly life. These sources are not of a physical but rather of a hyper-physical nature — the product of a sensitive mind.” *

Like the teachings of Paul Klee, Hofmann engages in a bit of ‘hand waving’ in the mechanics of translating emotions to canvas. This probably must be the case, since only the artist knows (or feels) his or her own mind. I imagine that the process of being able to exude one’s emotions onto a canvas is akin to meditation – a training of the mind and the body to know itself.

Today’s experiment:

I began today’s sketch after reading Hofmann’s essay (see below). He was discussing the fact that an artist had to get to know the tonal range of colors.

I began with one of my favorite colors – purple – which I tried to present in its range from dark tones (when mixed with black) to the lightest tone (when mixed with white). I performed the same operation with the complement – yellow. I reversed the tonalities, placing the lightest yellow under the darkest purple.

Eye
4″x6″ 140# Cold Pressed Watercolor Block

However it wasn’t the tonality shifts that prompted the next element of my drawing. I tried to think of a way to get emotion into my sketch. The dark end of the yellow expanse reminded me of an eye socket. One of the triggers for my own feelings is an image of my older brother’s eyes. Mike, my older brother, is autistic, low functioning and nonverbal. His eyes have always been featured in my photography of him. I don’t know if the eye in my sketch is his or mine.

* Hans Hofmann Hans Hofmann With An Introduction by Sam Hunter and Five Essays by Hans Hofmann. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc. 1963

THE COLOR PROBLEM IN PURE PAINTING – ITS CREATIVE ORIGIN

Published in catalogue of Hans Hofmann exhibition, Kootz Gallery, November 7 through December 3, 1955. Reprinted in catalogue of the Hans Hofmann Retrospective Exhibition organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art, 1957